Improved MEUF removal of naphthenic acids from produced water

Naphthenic acids are naturally occurring organics in produced waters from oil recovery operations. In principle, these contaminants can be removed using micellar-enhanced ultrafiltration (MEUF), which is an effective technique for the removal of organic contaminants from water streams. In this work, we show that the amphiphilic nature of the naphthenic acids contributed to decreasing the critical micelle concentration (CMC) of cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC), a widely used surfactant in MEUF. This reduction in CMC allowed a decrease in the CPC dosage required to attain certain removal of the organics, and hence, improved the performance of traditional MEUF as a result of reducing back contamination and potential fouling of the membrane. The effect of CPC feed concentration, and the concentration and carbon number of the naphthenic acids on permeate flux, recovery ratio and percent rejection of CPC and naphthenic acids were explored over a range of trans-membrane pressure. The MEUF setup employed hydrophilic polyacrylonitrile (PAN) hollow fiber membrane with 13 kDa MWCO, since it allowed for high permeate flux and contaminant rejection.